


Two Out of Three

by suitesamba



Series: Severus Sighs Anti-Valentine's Day Fest 2013 [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M, mention of threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Summary:</b>  They each want him, but he knows they’re better off with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Out of Three

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2013 Anti-Valentine's Day fest on the Severus Sighs Community on IJ to Prompt 5: Severus took a deep breath and closed his eyes, his heart breaking. -- This prompt has to be included, because it has been used in every #AVD fest we’ve had. *pets it* It warms the cold, shrivelled edges of your mods’ black, black #angsty hearts. ♥
> 
> **Disclaimer:** This is a work of fiction. The characters and their worlds belong to their original writers and no copyright infringement or offense is intended. No money was made from this story.
> 
> Beta'd by Roozetter & Abrae

Snape took a deep breath and closed his eyes, his heart breaking.

They looked so peaceful, lying wrapped together on the wide bed, Draco curled up into Harry’s side. Together, they had nursed him back from the brink of death. Draco had approached Harry, or so Harry told it, not more than an hour after Voldemort fell. Harry hadn’t trusted him, and had insisted on going with him to recover Snape’s body. When they found him gravely wounded but still alive, an argument had ensued. Harry wanted to take him to the hospital ward. Draco wanted to hide him and tell everyone he had died. He wanted to give Severus a chance – to be a part of their world if he lived, or to leave it behind and start anew. 

And he had lived. Nearly two years later, he still hadn’t made that decision.

They had enlisted Kreacher’s help, and taken Severus to Grimmauld Place. When he was strong enough to move again, they relocated him to a garden flat Harry bought in London. Only a few people knew he lived: Harry’s closest friends, Draco’s parents.

The boys got on with their lives. They both returned to Hogwarts in September for an accelerated N.E.W.T.s program. Draco surprised everyone and went to St. Mungo’s to study to be a healer. And Harry, a natural at Defense and a shoe-in for the Aurors, instead enrolled in Uni and moved into the flat with Severus.

With Draco’s help, they turned the third bedroom into a laboratory, expanded it with Wizard space, and gave Severus leave to brew…or not. Eight months after his rescue, he was finally able to make his own potions – the general restorative, the scar reducer, the neuro stabilizer to fight the tremors.

Dreamless Sleep – for all of them.

He had an Order of Merlin, a full pardon from the Ministry and a portfolio of articles from _The Daily Prophet_ speculating on his location. It was widely assumed he was alive – Harry had admitted to the Ministry that he’d removed Snape from the Shrieking Shack and provided for his care until he was strong enough to decide if he wanted to rejoin the Wizarding world. But he had refused to provide Snape’s location, or any details of his condition, or even whether he had, in fact, recovered.

In the space of a year and a half, Harry and Draco had moved from enemies, to adversaries, to acquaintances who tolerated each other’s presence, to cautious friends. Much of the transformation had happened in front of Severus, as the two vied to care for him in the early days, then competed for his time and attention. He thought, at first, when he felt well enough to puzzle and ponder it, that he was a father figure to them. But he watched them carefully, with the patience of the spy that he was and with the experience of years and years of exposure to teens growing into maturity, and determined that they were more rivals for his affection than young men in search of a father. 

He pretended to misinterpret their advances. It would not do to choose one or the other. Both were of age, nearing twenty, in fact, yet one was the heir to the Malfoy fortune and the other the Boy Who Lived. Were he the man he once was – bitter, hateful, resentful, vindictive—he would have had them both and played them against each other. But no. The new Severus watched them dance around him, then ultimately, dance around each other.

It would have taken very little to reach across the table during one of their long, quiet chess games and touch Harry’s cheek, lift his chin with a finger, lean in to capture the surprised mouth. He loved how Harry smelled, hair wind-tossed and clean, breath with his morning tea and afternoon coffee, clothes sun-dried on the roof when the weather cooperated. He imagined how his mouth would taste, how his skin would feel, how his afternoon beard would rasp on Harry’s cheeks.

But the games always ended in smiles, and the only thing that touched were their fingers as they ghosted over chessmen.

And Draco. Draco was training to be a healer and Severus was his once and future patient. His hands were professional when they prodded and poked him, soft and careful when examining the horrid wounds in his neck. Neither Harry nor Draco shied away from the wounds, but Draco’s touch was especially gentle. He had become adept at applying the scar reducing cream, standing behind Severus and wrapping his hands around his neck, working the cream in with agile fingertips.

It would have been so easy to catch his wrist, tug it until Draco lowered his head, turn and kiss those soft lips. He would wrap one hand behind Draco’s head, and the other would trace his aristocratic jaw, the contours of his throat. 

Sometimes the sexual tension was so high during those games of chess, those skillful applications of unguents, that Severus actually trembled trying to stay neutral, calm, unaffected. He was grateful that the trembling was easily attributed to the neurological damage.

In the end, it was inevitable that they would turn to each other. He told himself it was what he wanted anyway. He was too old for their youth, too scarred for their beauty, too jaded for their optimism. He could offer them nothing except the burden of his past to weigh down their futures. He had not decided if he was, in fact, alive in the Wizarding world. He would not tie them to his borderline existence.

But they loved him. He knew it. He felt it. He gloried in it for the space of a heartbeat. He let it whisper in his ear as he fell asleep. He knew they would remain fond of him even as they moved on, and tried to think of them as surrogate sons, tried to imagine himself as parental – proud of their accomplishments, immune to their allure.

Like all beautiful things in his life, it had to end.

He watched them another long moment as they lay there sleeping on Harry’s bed. He did not think they had meant for the door to be open. It was very early still, much earlier than he normally awoke. He imagined Draco had planned to be gone before he rose. He did not know how his heart could feel such conflicting emotions. He wanted nothing more – _nothing_ – than to walk over to the bed, slip his robe off his shoulders, his feet out of his slippers, and crawl into bed behind Harry, spooning up to him while his hand slipped around Draco’s back to pull him in even closer. 

His cock stirred at the thought, at the imagined closeness, the mere thought of his hands running up Draco’s back as Harry lay between them, pulling Draco in even closer as he turned his head to welcome Severus with green eyes so much older than his years, stretching his neck, offering his mouth.

He turned away, unable to take more, and slipped away to the kitchen, slippers on his cold feet, robe on his trembling shoulders, but nothing, nothing to shield his slowly breaking heart.

_Fin_


End file.
